BIG TRIGGER WARNING: this character was raped by an adult when he was younger. it's not really mentioned because i didn't feel like it had a meaningful & important place within the chapter, and that's not something i'm comfortable throwing in there unless i think it's important to the character's current thought process. but it is also part of his backstory, so some things that he personally glosses over in his mind might be confusing since i don't outright talk about this. what basically happened to him is going to be the first paragraph of the author's note below if you want to skip. it's not graphic at all, it's just a brief mention of one part that may be confusing without this context, but i thought i'd warn beforehand in case this is uncomfortable or upsetting to any readers

the queen of hearts fell into the snow,
and the jack of spades was lost in the wind,
and the king of diamonds got torn in two,
and both the jokers disappeared down your sleeve.
what'll we do when all we've got left is a couple of sevens,
and maybe an ace or two?

Carion Ferron Coal (18)

District Twelve

a month ago

Carion wouldn't say that he enjoyed screwing people over. Really, he didn't. He liked giving people what they asked for. He liked seeing their little hopeful faces twist into a grimace when they realized what they'd done. He liked handing them what they'd bargained for and watching them wish they hadn't come to him at all. Oh, you could call him sick, if you really wanted to—but it wouldn't be accurate. He was just making bargains. Making deals. Shuffling the cards of life, that's all.

He watched as a client hesitated before him, shuffling his cards again and again. Each little flick of the card, each extra little slap as they flew against each other—each one made the guy wince. He shook his head, started to back off, turned back around, and for a split second, Carion really thought the guy was going to fall to his knees and beg for it—beg for a free favor. But he knew that wasn't how Carion worked. Oh, they all knew.

This one was fun. Sometimes it took a little bit of deciding before he really took a deal to heart, before he slipped it under his belt, and other times he knew as soon as he saw the client walk in, as soon as he saw their face. Oh, yes. This one was fun.

"Coal—"

"Oh, stop it," he said, shaking his head and waving the guy off. He smiled at him pleasantly, teeth showing. "That's not my name."

"Magic Man," the guy said through gritted teeth, and Carion sat back in amusement, watched him mull over it a thousand times in three seconds. "You're just a kid. You shouldn't be doing this, you know."

"I'm no more a kid than you are," he told him. He wasn't. Hadn't been for years. He was nearly nineteen now, edging toward life outside the reaping bowl. He wasn't a kid. Hell, he wasn't a kid when he was a kid. Insisting he was just wasted his time. "Listen, Snip—I'm gonna call you Snip—it's really not that bad."

"You're asking me to have my kid take out extra tesserae," he snapped, and his face was beet red, his veins bulging in his forehead. He was absolutely livid, and the cracks and crevices in his face had lava flowing through them. "Not even for us. For you."

Carion shook his head and pointed at him. "No, no, no," he said. "Not for me. Really. But honestly, having forty-some names in there, what does that hurt? The odds don't change all that much. Honestly, they don't." He leaned toward Snip, his eyes sympathetic. Oh, he did care about his cause, he did. He wouldn't even be lying about that. There was no way in hell his kid would survive the Hunger Games. But a deal was a deal, and he'd set his price.

"Forty-some names in the reaping bowl, so you can give away my kid's tesserae, just to bring in the meds I need," Snip said, and he looked almost sick to his stomach. Carion just hoped he could make it outside if he was going to throw up.

He went back to shuffling his cards while Snip paced. He knew this made the clients antsy, but he liked them antsy. Split-second decisions were always better off for him.

Eventually, after a few minutes of silence except for the smacking of his cards and the pattering of Snip's feet, he broke down and leaned forward at his desk again. "Snip, think of it this way. The odds aren't that bad. The food's going to my clients who don't have children. And you get your meds. What's it hurt?" he said.

Snip swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat, and sat down at the desk with a thud. He pulled the contract that Carion had written over toward himself and grabbed the pen. Carion would have to ask Damien for another box of pens. If he was going to keep writing contracts at the rate he was lately, he was going to run out of his last two before the next couple of months were up. And even though his contracts could be in no way legally recognized, he knew it felt binding to the clients, so he'd never make a deal without one.

"What do I sign?" he asked. Carion had almost forgotten that he'd never learned how to write, that Snip was one of the ones who'd had to drop out of school when he was real young. Almost like Carion had to.

"Oh, just a scribble. On the line, if you would, please." When Snip had done so, Carion tossed the paper into his desk with his other contracts and sat back. He could tell that Snip was waiting for him to explain what was on the paper that he could hardly read, so he rambled off, "All right, so, you get the gist. I give you what you need when you give me what I ask for. You don't tell the authorities, I don't turn you in for asking me to smuggle. A deal's a deal, you signed, blah blah blah."

Snip looked like he was seconds away from throttling Carion, which was probably the most average reaction he got to his services. Customers, even when they walked out satisfied with the deal they'd gotten, were always a little pissed at him. It was the nature of the game, he supposed.

"How do I get you the grain? It comes year-round," Snip said.

Carion shrugged. "Just get me proof it's coming, and every month when it comes in, I'll send you what you need after you've sent me what I want. Agreeable?"

Snip didn't answer. He got up without a word and marched out of the room, and Carion could hear his footsteps as he traveled angrily throughout the house. The front door was slammed loud enough that he could hear it throughout, and Carion chuckled to himself.

Damien would be coming by soon enough, as Carion had instructed him to. He usually had him come by on days he had meetings with potential clients. Even when nothing panned out, he still liked to see the Peacekeeper occasionally, to make sure all of his favors were being dealt with, that the nice things he'd asked for were coming through. Managing this little business of his was like a machine, and he and Damien were the cogs in it. Well, he was more like the lever that set the whole thing running, and Damien was the gears that twisted and shifted and got everything done inside. But without Carion's abilities to set everything in motion, it would all fall apart. A machine couldn't be turned on if its lever was broken off.

Carion looked around his little house and walked into the kitchen, peering into the fridge. He was lucky to have a fridge in Twelve, but he had asked Damien for that ages ago. That one had been difficult to smuggle in, he was sure of it.

Sometimes he wondered how Damien got all the things through to Twelve, and he'd asked about a couple things, but it was easier not knowing. It was all boring, anyway, and not his part of the scheme. He didn't care, as long as Damien kept up his end of the bargain. And there was no way he wouldn't, no matter how much he despised Carion.

He'd never admit it, not ever. But Carion hoped to God he'd never have to use that video.

He went out of the house after a little while of Damien not showing up. Sometimes Peacekeeper business got in the way, and of course nothing could be helped then. The neighborhood around him was rundown and quiet, people stuck behind closed doors or off at work in the mines. Carion didn't usually play these people. They never came to him asking for help, and so he wouldn't do anything more than show their scrawny children magic tricks. He had principles. He had a code—it just wasn't one that most people would agree with.

He walked along with his hands in his pockets, his card box slipped down inside. The edges were worn and falling apart, and he was pretty sure that at any moment it was going to break and he was going to have to find another replacement. The little cardboard boxes that Damien got pens in worked, but they got soggy in the rain, and then they started deteriorating into nothing. Still, it was almost like an original card box, and that was good enough. Better than getting a new deck. He rarely ever did—avoided it unless his cards were turning up missing, or they were really starting to fall apart. He liked his cards; he didn't go about just replacing them left and right.

His reputation stepped into a room before he did, or marched into an open space, so some of the people outside their houses watched him warily. When he was younger, he was pretty sure they would pity him—all scrawny and alone, that Peacekeeper watching over him because they thought he loved Carion's mother. Oh, and they thought that was scandalous. The real arrangement was much, much worse, and they didn't know it, but it hung in the air. Clung to him, sticky like humid air, and people watched where he walked, knew what he could do. Or, really, what he could get done.

He nodded toward Mrs. Havens, watched as she collected up her bundle of raggedy yarn that she carried around despite all her attempts at knitting seeming to fail quickly. She called him the devil, he was pretty sure, but never to his face. It was hard to find people with that much faith in Twelve anymore, not when people died in the streets and their God watched on absentmindedly. But he guessed seeing what someone assumed was the antichrist walking the streets offering to make deals for the price of a soul would spur on anyone with the faintest touch of spirituality in their bones.

At some point, he supposed he just got tired of nodding on to people as if he cared. So he carried himself like the antichrist in need of a new bargain, head held high, cards in his pockets. His eyes and the set of his mouth, the calculated placement of every step—they knew what he was doing, just as much as any onlooker.

One day it may all come back to bite his ass, but that day, he'd just call in some of his unfilled favors.

present day

Reaping days passed slow like thick syrup through a tiny little filter, the minutes seeping through one by one, stretching themselves outward ever-so-slightly. It was nearly imperceptible to the constant eye, which made Carion's gaze on the clock all the more painful. But he couldn't tear his eyes away, not when there was nothing to do. No one came to discuss deals with him on reaping morning, and there was no point in going on a walk through town when he'd just have to run home before he was even done to get a ride to the square. Damien's car would be there in four hours, in three, in two, in one—

Oh, hell, any minute now, but with the passage of time designed to make him suffer, any minute now felt impossible to bear. A heavy weight on his shoulders. A world to hold up in his hands.

The knock on the door set time in motion again, and he was on his feet, slipping his shoes on and leaving out the door. The Peacekeeper's car outside would be imposing to the rest of the neighborhood, but it was laughable to Carion. Dark, tinted windows, the big black body of the car, what it represented to everyone else. It was all so ridiculous. It all meant absolutely nothing, when really, Carion had Damien wrapped around his finger. He had one of District Twelve's nightmares, a menace from Two, doing whatever Carion wanted.

"Did you get a shipment today?"Carion asked as she shut the door behind him, following Damien out to his car. He slipped into the passenger's seat and felt the rumble of the engine as they passed through the run-down paths that passed for roads in this area. "I thought you said something was coming in from Three this week."

Damien nodded wordlessly, as he always did anymore. It seemed he used as few words as possible with him, which wasn't ideal when Carion was trying to determine the status of his favors with him.

"What was it?" Carion prompted.

"Medicine," Damien answered, turning sharply toward the square.

Carion was filled with hatred for him when he was quiet, when there was nothing to talk about. He hated him more than anything else in the world. Hell, maybe he hated other things in the world just because there was so much hatred for Damien, it seeped out and filled all other corners. He was convenient, a useful gear to keep things moving forward smoothly, but he wasn't wanted. He was necessary, and Carion was smarter than to forego using someone so useful, but that didn't make him resent the man just as much as the man resented Carion for sticking him in this situation.

When they got to the square, Carion slipped through registration and into a spot in the back of the square. His eyes roamed over the people his age, the scrawny ones who hadn't gotten any consistent food since they were no longer at school. A lot of those people ended up coming to him, begging for help. They were the people he sent away with tesserae from those like Snip's kid, and their ends of the deal were less satisfactory than asking for the tesserae of someone's child. But he had no use for bags of shitty grain and containers of piss-poor oil, so he didn't care much if the price was comparatively miniscule.

It was easy to resent a lot of the people here, those who made everything so boring. Shaking, chattering fear ran through each person in the crowd, everyone standing deadly still and watching the stage get put together warily. It was tiring. He would be glad when he was no longer standing in the crowds of terrified people, although he guessed that next year, standing with their parents might be even worse.

Still, it would all be over eventually. It was easier to remember that when the mayor finally got up on the stage, followed quickly after by the escort, Weselle Hart. No mentors to announce, none to grimace as they were asked if they wanted to give a speech for their soon-to-be-dead tributes. Just Weselle Hart, up there with his nervous eyes and his nose turned up at everyone in the crowd.

Carion pulled out his cards and started shuffling them quietly, bored with the reaping and needing something to do with his hands.

Weselle Hart drew the ladies first, a long-standing tradition in District Twelve. Some girl by the name of Abilene Malloy walked up to the stage, and Carion was expecting someone inches off from death, or a small child—someone with no chance, really. But this girl seemed capable enough. Scrawny and weak like anyone from District Twelve, but capable, maybe.

Weselle moved onto boys after Abilene had nodded silently to the district, no comments for the crowd as usual.

"Carion Ferron Coal," Weselle called out, and Carion looked up with a split second of a frown. Oh. Well, that would be him. He let out a breath and continued shuffling his cards as he walked up to the stage. His eyes searched for Damien even as he kept his head forward, and he saw him standing off to the side, next to the stage. He looked pleased above all else, but when he saw that Carion was just… shuffling his cards, maybe that threw him off. His brows furrowed. What, did he expect Carion to cry?

"Is there anything you'd like to say, Carion?" Weselle asked, and Carion was tempted to tell him to call him Magic Man. He liked that so much more than his name, and if he had to be going off to the Games—well, he could say so later. If he just called himself the Magic Man before anyone actually knew him, they might laugh in his face.

Let them get to know why first. Let them understand he was more than his short height and his skinny arms, and the slow shuffling of his cards.

so basically the peacekeeper damien used to assault & rape carion when he was younger, but at one point carion used a camera he'd stolen to record the whole thing so he could use it for blackmail & now he gets whatever he wants from damien bc of this blackmail